Reality Bites

The president gave a big speech on the economy today but, first, he decided to comment on the news of the past few months.

"If you think you have a better plan for making sure every American has the security of quality, affordable health care, stop taking meaningless repeal votes and share your concrete ideas with the country...If you are serious about a balanced, long-term fiscal plan that replaces the mindless cuts currently in place, or tax reform that closes corporate loopholes and gives working families a better deal, I'm ready to work - but know that I will not accept deals that do not meet the test of strengthening the prospects of hard-working families."

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And also, too:

With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am here to say this needs to stop. Short-term thinking and stale debates are not what this moment requires. Our focus must be on the basic economic issues that the matter most to you - the people we represent. And as Washington prepares to enter another budget debate, the stakes for our middle class could not be higher. The countries that are passive in the face of a global economy will lose the competition for good jobs and high living standards. That's why America has to make the investments necessary to promote long-term growth and shared prosperity. Rebuilding our manufacturing base. Educating our workforce. Upgrading our transportation and information networks. That's what we need to be talking about. That's what Washington needs to be focused on.

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Right.

And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

Of course, all of what he's railing against here has been going on since 2010, whe nthe American people put their brains in a jar and elected a House Of Representatives full of Louie Gohmerts and a Senate minority for which Bob Bennett of Utah was Che Guevara. The president has paid a fearsome price for neglecting his primary duty as the leader of his party -- to make the Republican party pay an even more fearsome price for rendering itself into the retrograde monkeyhouse. If he had fulfilled that duty as leader of his party, he would have been better able to fulfill his duties as leader of the country. Now, he's pushing back against a resistless tide of complete, unfettered vandalism and lunacy, as best expressed in the lead story in today's Times, in which the House majority produced its wish-list that absolutely will become law the first chance they get to enact it. They do no bluff. This was no posturing. This is what they believe good government is, and it is what they will do to the country if they ever get the power. This was the trailer for the eventual disaster movie.

One step Boehner noted that Obama should take toward job creation is approving the construction of the Keystone pipeline - which has been a top priority of House Republicans. The House's top Republican also urged Obama to "work with" lawmakers to delay requirements in the Affordable Care Act. The House voted to delay both the individual mandate and the employer mandate last week.

Yes, but this also risks sending the signal that, just six months into his second term, Obama is fresh out of ideas. There's little hope of getting Congress to act on major initiatives and little appetite in the White House to fight for bold new legislation that is likely to fail. And so the president, it seems, is going into reruns. In fairness, the 2005 speech was on the timeless theme of the need for education, training, regulations and tax changes to preserve the middle class. "The true test of the American ideal," he said then, is "whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead and reach their dreams." That message was so good he repeated it in 2011 in Kansas, where he said, "This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules." But while that message remains relevant, Obama is now facing a Republican opposition that, by House Speaker John Boehner's own account, is measuring its success by how many laws it can undo.

Seems like the fact that the country has the same problem, and only half the political fauna are interesting in solving any of them, then the same solutions are a logical thing to propose, but I could be wrong here. Any suggestions on getting past the obvious vandalism?

There's no longer serious talk about a grand bargain that could reform entitlement programs and the tax code.

Entitlement "reform"! New! Fresh! Exciting!

By now, though the president is loath to point it out, it's obvious that, in terms of addressing the country's real problems, there was no particular point in having elected him twice, because there was no serious intention on the part of the opposition to recognize his administration as being possessed of a legitimate mandate to do anything, and no serious attempt on the part of the courtier press to push back against the very real danger of what that situation implies.